I've installed DSL embedded on a USB stick and installed syslinux to it, and it boots OK. However, one of the points of booting DSL off an USB stick will be that, unlike CD, you can write back to it. But I enter a couple of issues here. (This is all about booting from the stick, BTW. I'm not using qemu.)

If I boot with the toram option I find that when trying to mount sda1 I get the message "Error: mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda1 is mounted on /cdrom". And if I open a root shell and try to umount /cdrom I just get "umount: /cdrom: device is busy". And if I try to write to /cdrom I just get the message that it's a "read-only file system". So there's no way I can write a file to a directory on the memorystick. I think it's nice to use the toram option when it's enough RAM, but it seems I can forget it here...

If I boot without the toram option I can mount sda1. But only root can write to it. I thought booting DSL from memorystick and just write my files to it as user would be nice, but its not that simple. If I try to change permissions on folder from a root shell I just get told that operation is not permitted. Usually you expect most things to be permitted for root, but I guess it's due to the FAT filesystems not knowing about permissions that chown, chmod and chgrp don't work. Anyway, it's a bit of a hassle and I wish there was a way I could mount a directory on the stick with write permissons for the user (dsl).

Otherwise this seems brilliant. I really like the mydsl directory option for extensions. Can you store boot options and/or other settings too using DSL embedded on a USB stick?[EDIT]Sorry. Being to tired here. Answer to my very last question are obvious: .filetool.lst, backup.tar.gz & all that jazz... But my main Q. still stands as something that puzzles me....[/EDIT]

I'm not sure from your post if you installed embedded DSL - the version that will run in a window under Windows - or normal DSL?

If you installed DSL normally, did is it DSL or DSL-N? The reason I ask is that I have the same issue as you with DSL-N but not DSL.

You can get around your problem by creating two partitions on the USB stick, you will then be able to boot from one partition and write to the other partition. If you want to share your files with Windows, it would be better to boot DSL from the second partition since Windows can usually only see the first partition.

No, not DSL-N. I just unzipped dsl-3.3-embedded.zip to the stick and installed syslinux (3.36) to it.Two partitions might be the way to go. Anything special to get syslinux to load DSL off the second partition on the stick...?

Anything special to get syslinux to load DSL off the second partition on the stick...?

I guess you would have to run syslinux from linux since Windows would not be able to make or see (easily) the second partition.

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Or you could just make an ext2 partition...

I've been thinking about this now that I have Windows drivers for ext2. What would be the implications of using DSL from a USB stick with ext2 partitions - grub/lilo boot instead of syslinux I guess, but anything else?